Author Archives: xsisupport

Getting your serial numbers from the Subscription Center

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If you are on Subscription, you’ll be able to get your 2010 serial numbers from the Subscription Center.

  1. Log in to the Subscription Center.
  2. Click Contract Administration.
    Subscription Center main page

    Subscription Center main page

  3. On the Contract Administration page, click Coverage Report.
    Coverate Report

    Coverage Report

  4. On the Suscription Coverage Report page, click a Contract #.
    Subscription coverage report

    Subscription coverage report

  5. Under the Products section of the Subscription Coverage Report, you’ll find your serial numbers.
    Serial numbers for a selected contract

    Serial numbers for a selected contract

Turning on mental ray diagnostics from the command line

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In Softimage, you can enable the diagnostics in the Render Manager, by going to the Diagnostics tab and selecting the Information and Progress check boxes. If you’re working on the command-line with xsibatch, you may not want to start up Softimage just to select those check boxes. So, here’s how to do from the command line: just add -script and -verbose “on” to the xsibatch command line.


xsibatch -render "\\server\project\Scenes\Example.scn" -frames 1 -script verbosity.js -verbose "on"

where verbosity.js is a script that looks like this:

// Information and Progress
Dictionary.GetObject("Passes.mentalray").Parameters("VerbosityLevel").Value = 60;

If you set the VerbosityLevel to 252, you will get the Basic and Detailed Debug log messages too.

Toxik 2009 standalone licenses on 64-bit Windows

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Now that I’m part of Autodesk, all kinds of calls come through to my phone. For example, the other day I took a Toxik 2009 support call. The customer couldn’t get his license to work and I was the sixth person he had spoken to, so I helped him out.

The problem was that he was installing Toxik 2009 on 64-bit Windows:

  • Toxik 2009 standalone licensing does not work on 64-bit Windows. You need to contact your reseller or ABC and get a network license.
  • The LMTOOLS that ships with Toxik does not work on 64-bit Windows. Download the latest version of AdlM and use it instead.

Softimage 2010 Pricing and Availability

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See the press release for Softimage 2010 pricing.

Note that the specified prices (SRP and upgrade) for Softimage 2010 Windows are for a standalone licenses. Network licenses are more expensive than standalone licenses.

Also, Linux licenses are always network licenses. That is why the press release shows a price difference between Softimage 2010 Windows and Linux: the Windows price is for a standalone license, and the Linux price is for a network license.

Softimage Advanced licenses are always network licenses (since Advanced includes Batch licenses, you need floating licenses to be able to use your Batch licenses on render nodes).

Creating an alpha channel with a black-and-white image

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The other day I happened upon this old tutorial (circa XSI 3.01) from Rob Wuster about “creating an alpha channel with an extra B/W image”. Here’s a quick update to make it work with a more recent version of XSI (eg Softimage 7.5).

You need to plug the Mix 2 Colors into an image layer. To create the image layer, I added the texture by clicking Modify > Texture > Add > Image.

Using Mix 2 Colors to fake an alpha channel

Using Mix 2 Colors to fake an alpha channel

This will give you the same effect shown in the tutorial:

Black-and-white image stamped on a texture

Black-and-white image stamped on a texture

Changing the default Project folders

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The default directory structure for new Projects is specified by a set of values in the registry.

Look under the key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Softimage\SOFTIMAGE Application\C:|Softimage|Softimage_7.5|Application|bin\Default Directory Structure.

You can add new directories by adding a new string value to the Default Directory Structure registry key.

A plug-in that updates the default directory structure was posted to the XSI Mailing list .

Also posted in the Autodesk KB.

See Also:

Checking the status of remote license servers

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One of the Maya support agents forwarded a case to me last Friday: installing the Softimage license server breaks the 3ds Max license server.

It turned out that the 3ds Max license server, which was on a physically separate computer, had gone down. The Softimage license server had nothing to do with it. It was just a coincidence (besides, installing a license server on machine A cannot break a license server running on machine B; the two license servers are completely separate).

Anyway, the 3ds Max license server was in a locked room, and the person with the key was on vacation. To check the status of the 3ds Max license server, we had to use the license manager installed on a another computer. The LMTOOLS GUI is kind of flakey, so it is better to use the command line.

To check whether the license server is up, you can run this command:

lmutil lmstat -c 27000@server
or
lmutil lmstat -c @server

To check the usage status of Softimage Advanced 7.5:

lmutil lmstat -c @server -f 78800SFTIMA_7_5F

To check the usage status of the Batch licenses:

lmutil lmstat -c @server -f 78800SFTIMASIB1_7_5F
lmutil lmstat -c @server -f 78800SFTIMASIB2_7_5F
lmutil lmstat -c @server -f 78800SFTIMASIB3_7_5F
lmutil lmstat -c @server -f 78800SFTIMASIB4_7_5F
lmutil lmstat -c @server -f 78800SFTIMASIB5_7_5F

Notes

  • The -c flag allows you to specify a “license file”, which for FLEXnet licensing is usually really port@host.
  • To check the status of a remote license server using the local LMTOOLS, I had to set the environment variable ADSKFLEX_LICENSE_FILE to point to the remote server before I started LMTOOLS.exe.
  • The Autodesk KB also suggests another way to use LMTOOLS to check the remote license server.

Virtual servers and the Autodesk network license manager

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The Autodesk Network License Manager is not tested on virtual servers, and so virtual servers are not officially supported.

However, I know some customers are running their license servers on virtual servers. I believe that they hard code the MAC address of the virtual NIC to match the MAC address in the license file. That way the existing license file will work on the virtual server.

hat tip: TravisNave